Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is becoming an increasingly critical consideration in the development of future communication technologies. In M2M communications, machine-type communication (MTC) devices such as smart meters, signboards, cameras, remote sensors, laptops, and appliances are connected to a communication network. These devices may differ dramatically from conventional communication devices. Many MTC devices are designed to transmit sporadic bursts of one or a few short packets containing measurements, reports, and triggers, such as temperature, humidity, or wind speed readings. In most cases, MTC devices are expected to be installed in a fixed location or to have low mobility. MTC devices are typically low-complexity devices, targeting low-end (low average revenue per user, low data rate, high latency tolerance) applications. These devices often have severe limitations on power/energy consumption as well.
Because of these features, the M2M services defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards and other communication standards place very different requirements on a wireless network from those of traditional services, such as voice and web streaming. These differences are compounded by the fact that wireless networks supporting M2M communications may be required to serve a significantly larger number of devices than is typical in conventional wireless networks, as MTC devices are expected to be cheap and widely deployed. As a result, designing for M2M/MTC communications in wireless communication networks creates several challenges and there is an increasing need for cost-, radio resource- and energy-efficient radio access solutions for M2M applications.
In conventional wireless communication systems, for example, LTE systems, the processing of received data at the receiver (i.e., base station, relay node, or other reception point) typically includes:                receiving the signal from a user equipment (UE) or other wireless device;        demodulating the received signal to a baseband signal;        applying orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) demodulation and cyclic prefix removal to map symbols into different physical resource blocks;        descrambling the demodulated signal with a UE-specific sequence;        performing rate de-matching;        decoding the signal (e.g., at the physical layer, typically turbo coding) using a known channel de-coding scheme; and        confirming that an error detection check (e.g., a cyclic redundancy check (CRC)) is successful.        
If the CRC check succeeds, the sequence of bits (usually in the form of transport blocks) is passed from the physical layer to the media access control (MAC) layer for further processing. The receiver may also transmit feedback information (e.g., an acknowledgement (ACK) indication) confirming successful reception. If the CRC check fails, the received signal is maintained at the receiver and a retransmission may be requested. For example, the receiving node may request retransmission by sending feedback information indicating the transmission failed (e.g., a negative acknowledgement (NACK) indication) to the transmitting device.
Given the currently available solutions and the constraints associated with supporting MTC services, providing coverage to a large number of MTC devices would likely require a massive deployment of base stations (macro, micro, pico, or femto stations) or relay nodes, or the use of extremely powerful base stations with advanced receivers that possess several receiver antennas capable of collecting the weak signals from MTC devices and of using advanced radio processing to overcome the difficulties. However, both of these solutions would require great expense and significant installation effort by network operators. As a result, there is a need for efficient communication methods for M2M systems that can more effectively handle a dramatic increase in the number of MTC devices to be supported and the commensurate amount of MTC traffic.
Both the increase in M2M communications and the increasing use of MTC devices bring forth new challenges for the wireless communication networks to develop a cost-, radio resource-, and energy-efficient radio access technology for M2M applications and MTC devices. Therefore, there is a need for systems and methods that link the way wireless devices are manufactured and operated with the conditions in which the wireless devices are operated.